Stitching in the Barn

I've been sick since Tuesday! I have gotten some sewing stuff done but I don't feel like sharing yet. Getting the pictures ready seems like too much work. My kids have also finished projects I want to share. I'm so proud of what they've done but I'm tired. Even though I feel sick and don't feel like fixing pictures, I did design a quilt for my bed today.  Oops, I forgot to get rid of those lines! But that's the way I feel, a bit absent minded. I want to make a quilt for my king size bed but the size is daunting. It seems like such a large blank canvas. On top of that, I've seen sizes ranging from 96" x 96" to 120" x 120".  After looking at endless pictures on Google, I finally decided to see what I could find in big blocks at one of my favorite sites . I used the Drunkard's Chain pattern from Quilter's Cache . This is one of the variations she suggested. I'm still not sure of it because it looks like an awful lo...

It seems I've been on a spending spree on quilt rulers over the past few weeks. I blame my MIL for my recent spending last week but I think it started at Valentines Day when my husband bought me these rulers I had been salivating over. Then my MIL came into town for spring break and decided to buy quilting supplies for her & her sister so they can start quilting at JoAnn's. Shopping with her always makes me want to buy something for myself so I got the Easy Angle because Bonnie Hunter recommended it and a Double Wedding Ring template set that was on clearance from $30 down to $8! I stopped at the checkout to make sure it was complete, the bag was torn on one side. It turned out that one of the small pieces was missing so I got it at 1/2 off so it was only $4 and there was a drawing of the template in the book so I'm not really missing any pieces! I have to tell you I'm glad I started quilting 10 years ago! The prices for equipment seem so hi...

Well this post is going to have quite a few pictures :o) I'll make them thumbnails, some with links to the full size. I finished up the two blocks I needed for blockofthemonth  last week:   These are January and February. I'll make March's block later. While sewing these, I finally remembered my leaders & enders blocks. I got one done but something went wrong with my friendship star. I don't know how this happened but I almost did it on the next one! I left this one alone and fixed the second. It looks funny but not entirely unappealing so I don't think I'm going to fix it.

Today I stitched & turned it with the batting & the backing and did the stitch in the ditch to prep it for free-motion quilting. I used Purple thread from Connecting Threads and I love how it looks. I used a tip I picked up recently. I used hairspray as basting spray to stick the two layers that weren't getting turned together. Since it was a small quilt & I had an old can of Aquanet hanging around I thought I'd try it and it worked very well. I didn't even have to go outside for better ventilation to use it. I sprayed it on both sides to be sure it stuck and everything went fine. There were no puckers on the back side of my quilt, just on the top that was only pin basted.

I couldn't get the quilt out of my mind & sketched this up earlier today on Inkscape Then I took a 2 hour nap. The day can be long when you wake up at 2:30 am to go to work. Everyone went to bed around 10 pm because they were feeling sick so I stayed up to sew and got this done Now its after almost 2 am & I'm going to pay for it tomorrow. Its a 6.5 inch 54-40 or Fight block. I decided to start with two extremely bright colors on a mini quilt and couldn't wait to get a block done. Now I'm too tired to continue. Plus, I made a mistake in my math and cut the strips for the 4-patches 2.5 inches instead of 1.5 inches & wasted a bit of fabric, which irks me so I'm off to get some sleep.

I wanted to make a quilt. I wanted it to be quick and easy. I wanted it to be flannel, front & back with batting. I had these flannels in my stash from a Black Friday sale at JoAnn's years ago: They're very juvenile but go together perfectly. I saw a free pattern on the internet but I discarded it as it was made for a larger number of fabrics than four and I wanted to use just these and not buy more. I decided I wanted a "simple" rail fence quilt with large blocks for less piecing. Here are the blocks spaced 4 inches apart with a 12 inch border  This looked huge and the scale wasn't right. I then spaced the rails 3 inches apart with a 9 inch border and some white fabric to block it down to 9 inches This looks more balanced to me and the blocks are only slightly smaller. I also searched Google for images of rail fence quilts and decided it needed a small inner border to contain it. I have at least 3 yards of each fabric so I started d...

I used Inkscape to make a layout for my BOM quilt: I really liked this one! Maybe I need to make a mini mock up to test out how it looks. (crossposted to my LJ)